Create a Workout Plan for Amazing Fitness Results

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I'm 24 and have been into fitness for over seven years. I focus on eating well, getting enough sleep, etc. Every six months, I check my health by getting my blood tested, including my testosterone levels. I've noticed that when I lose weight, my testosterone drops more than you'd expect for my age and lifestyle. The craziest change in total testosterone has been from the mid-600s to the low-200s.

This drop in testosterone affected my life quality, but I have no interest in taking anabolic steroids or TRT (at such a young age). So, I started looking for natural ways to boost it. That's when I found out about Tongkat Ali, a natural supplement. I did my homework and decided to give it a try.

It wasn't easy to find a trustworthy brand, but eventually, I found Nootropics Depot. They test their supplements religiously (and those from competitors), and share their findings in-depth on Reddit. It looked like the obvious choice, so I placed an order. I'm usually doubtful about “testosterone boosting” supplements because most are, for lack of better words, absolute garbage. But let's talk about my experience with Tongkat Ali from Nootropics Depot, and find out if you should give it a shot.

So, sit back, grab some popcorn and let’s dive into my review of Nootropics Depot Tongkat Ali.

Understanding the goal of your workout plan

First things first. What are the amazing results you wish to achieve by creating a workout plan?

If you want to be the best runner you possible can be, then your workout plan is going to look different than if you want to become a strongman (a giant person that throws stones and does other cool heavy-lifting stuff).

Do you wish to lose fat, or gain muscle or are you just plain out super cheeky and want to achieve both at the same time?

Being cheeky here is possible if you’re just starting.

I still try to be cheeky sometimes, which often works a little bit, but most of the time I focus on one goal at a time. This works out great for me.

Write down what you want to achieve. Be very clear and precise. Be determined and don’t quit on your goals.

You’ll become a stronger person mentally and physically this way.

Your diet will determine a significant portion of your success no matter the goal.

How many days a week should your workout plan be?

The final stop before the actual workout stuff, I promise! This is too important to leave out.

Before creating any workout plan, you must know how many days in the week you’re going to commit.

If you don’t have time for a 6-day/week workout plan, then don’t create this workout plan.

It’s a lot better to create a three days a week workout plan, which you consistently follow.

Now besides time, also factor in your motivation.

How many days a week can you hype yourself up to go to the gym, even when motivation disappears and discipline is all you have?

Six times? Great. Three times? Awesome.

Be sure to think about this and whatever you choose, be consistent. Consistency is what gives you the amazing results.

I like to practically live in the gym 12 days a week, this is also not recommended.

Rest is crucial for your muscles to grow, and your body to recover, so leave at least one day of your week free to let your body rest completely.

Even though I skip rest days, this advice is solid, so trust me here.

Combine strength training with cardio in your workout plan

After reading the headline, you might wonder: I’m trying to get huge and strong, what’s the deal with cardio?

Or on the other end of the spectrum: I want to have insane cardio, why do I need to do strength training?

Well, I haven’t always been a saint that does both, but let me make my case before you decide to ditch the combo plan altogether.

I take my guess that you’re reading this blog to become the best version of yourself.

You will most likely not be the best in the world in any aspect fitness-related, e.g. the person with the heaviest bench press or the fastest one mile.

So, why not focus on becoming generally better than nearly everybody in everything?

I believe we should focus on all aspects of fitness and that this will benefit us most in life.

We won’t bench press more than the heaviest bench presser in the world, but we’ll look better, be leaner, faster, jump higher, etc.

In contrast, you won’t run the fastest, but look better, be more muscular, stronger, etc.

When I started I just wanted to get huge and strong, but even if you’re starting skinny, there comes a point where walking up the stairs will eventually tire you out.

Then you realized you messed up.

Create a workout plan where you combine strength training and cardio from the start for the amazing results you're looking for.

Exercise selection in your workout plan

In this section, I’m going to give you an overview of the best strength exercises you can do for each body part.

I’ll also give an overview of some cardio options.

Later I’ll show you how to use this information to effectively create your workout plan for amazing results.

If you don’t know how a certain exercise works, make sure to find a good YouTube tutorial and practice until you’ve perfected the form.

Always try to avoid injury like it’s some kind of disease. Every injury will set you back on your goals big time.

BIG MUSCLES

Legs quads focus | lower-body: Barbell back squats (most recommended), Front squats, Leg press (recommended), Goblet squats, Bulgarian split squats, Hack squats, Lunges, and leg extensions.

Legs hamstring focus | lower-body: Romanian deadlifts (recommended), deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, trap bar deadlifts, barbell hip thrusts (recommended), Good mornings, lying leg curls (recommended), and seated leg curls.

Back (horizontal pull) | upper-body: Bent-over Barbell/Dumbbell rows (recommended), Pendlay rows (recommended), Seated cable rows, One-arm cable rows, and Chest-supported dumbbell rows.

Back (vertical pull) | upper-body: Lat pulldowns (Overhand grip/Underhand grip/One arm/ etc.) and Pull-Ups (different grips/weighted/etc.). All recommended.

Chest (horizontal push)| upper-body: Barbell/Dumbbell bench press (recommended), Barbell/Dumbbell incline bench press (recommended), Barbell/Dumbbell decline bench press, Push-ups (recommended), dips, and cable cross-overs.

Shoulders (vertical push) | upper-body: Standing Barbell/Dumbbell overhead press (recommended), seated Barbell/Dumbbell overhead press (recommended), Arnold press, Push press, Lateral raises (recommended), and Cable external rotations (recommended for shoulder health).

SMALL MUSCLES

Biceps: Standing or seated Dumbbell curls (Hammer curls, alternated curls, etc. - Recommended), Barbell curls, Cable curls with a bar or one hand (recommended), Chin-ups, and Cable hammer curls (recommended).

Triceps: Diamond push-ups, Overhead triceps extensions, Close grip bench press (recommended), Cable rope extensions (recommended), Cable bar pushdowns, and Triceps kickbacks.

Abs: Hanging leg raises (recommended), Hanging knee raises (recommended), Weighted cable rope crunches (recommended), Ab roll-out, Plank, L-sit, and Crunches.

Calves: Standing/Seated calve raises with a barbell/smith machine/machine, Leg press calve raises, Single leg calve raises, and Jump rope.

Forearms: Barbell reverse biceps curl, Reverse cable curls (recommended), Dumbbell reverse curl, Farmer walks, and Pull-up hang.

Cardio: Walking/Running on a treadmill, Stationary Bike, Elliptical, Stairmaster, and Jump rope.

Your workout plan for amazing results

We’ve arrived at the good stuff.

Here you’re going to learn how to select the actual exercises to create the workout plan that will give you amazing results.

We will aim to train every muscle at least twice a week.

How we achieve this is going to be based on the days you decided you want to commit to training earlier in the blog post.

Training 2-3 days a week: full-body

Training 4 days a week: upper-body/lower-body x2

Training 5 days a week: upper-body/lower-body + Push/Pull/Legs

Training 6 days a week: Push/Pull/Legs x2

We have three different types of workout plans here: full-body, upper-body/lower-body, and push/pull/legs. This is how you select the exercises for each of these types:

Full-body: select one exercise from each of the 6 groups standing under “big muscles”. You don’t need to focus on the smaller muscle groups, because these will be trained by the exercises you perform for the big muscles as well.

Upper-body: select one exercise from the 4 upper-body groups under “big muscles” and select one triceps and one biceps exercise.

Lower-body: select two exercises from each of the 2 lower-body groups under “big muscles” and select one or two calves exercises.

Push: select two exercises from each of the 2 push groups under “big muscles” and select one or two triceps exercises.

Pull: select two exercises from each of the 2 pull groups under “big muscles” and select one or two biceps exercises.

Legs: select two exercises from each of the 2 lower-body groups under “big muscles” and select one or two calves exercises.

Optional in each workout: abs and forearms. Select one exercise. They recover fast, so you can train them as much as you’d like, but you don’t have to.

A big misconception is that ab training reduces belly fat. Just know that this isn’t the case, you can’t spot-reduce fat.

After strength training: choose one form of cardio and go at a pace you’re comfortable with for 15-30 minutes.

Cardio in your workout plan: low-intensity vs high-intensity

Both low-intensity cardio, e.g. 30 minutes of steady-paced cardio where you don’t feel like dying, and high-intensity cardio, e.g. 15 seconds of sprints followed by 30 seconds of low-intensity (the kind where you do feel like dying), is beneficial.

To do low-intensity: just take the time and pace you like.

For high-intensity: choose the type of cardio, e.g. sprints, hill-sprints, bike sprints, jump rope, etc. Perform 6-10 all-out effort sprints of 15-30 seconds with 30-60seconds of low-intensity after.

You can also choose to create a workout plan where you have separated cardio and strength training days.

Note: if you want to put more focus on cardio or another sport, then I would recommend following the 2-3 days full-body strength training routine. You can thereby add 1-3 specific days that you focus on that specific thing of choice, i.e. running, biking, swimming, football, etc.

Reps/sets/rest in your workout plan

I’ll leave the science behind and give you straight-up answers here. There are two ways to go about this.

You can use the detailed explanation below, which goes more in-depth about specific rep ranges for certain goals.

This will be useful if you want to focus more on one specific goal.

To focus on strength: 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps, with 3-5 minutes of rest.

To focus on muscle: 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps, with 1-2 minutes of rest.

To focus on endurance: 3-4 sets of 15-30 reps, with 1 minute of rest.

The other option is to create a workout plan with my simple answer.

For most people starting a workout routine keeping the sets at 3-4, with a weight they can lift for 8-12 reps will be great for their goals. I would recommend simply starting with this, i.e. 3 sets of 10 reps per exercise.

Examples of a full-body workout plan

This is just an example of how I would create a full-body workout plan for amazing results:

Monday

• Barbell back squats 3 sets of 8 reps
• Barbell bench press 3 sets of 12 reps
• Barbell row 3 sets of 12 reps
• Dumbbell overhead press 3 sets of 8 reps
• Lat pulldown overhand grip 3 sets of 8 reps
• lying leg curls 3 sets of 12 reps.
• Finish with 20 minutes of stationary bike.

Tuesday

45 minutes of walking (with a dog)

Wednesday

• Romanian deadlifts 3 sets of 10 reps
• Pendlay rows 3 sets of 8 reps
• Incline dumbbell bench press 3 sets of 12 reps
• Goblet squats 3 sets of 15 reps
• One arm lat pulldown 3 sets of 10 reps each
• Arnold press 3 sets of 10 reps.
• Finish with 20 minutes of stationary bike.

Thursday

Rest

Friday

• Barbell back squats 3 sets of 12 reps
• Barbell bench press 3 sets of 8 reps
• Barbell row 3 sets of 8 reps
• Dumbbell overhead press 3 sets of 12 reps
• Lat pulldown overhand grip 3 sets of 12 reps
• lying leg curls 3 sets of 15 reps.
• Finish with 20 minutes of stationary bike.

Saturday

high-intensity jump rope session.

10 sets of 20 seconds of all-out effort and 40 seconds of low-intensity.

Sunday

Rest

How to keep making progress on your workout plan

Hopefully, by now you’ve created a workout plan that brings you amazing results.

The only thing left to discuss is how do you keep progressing, so it will be great for months to come?

Your body adapts to the challenges you throw at it. At first, your body will become stronger, faster, build muscle, etc. with your initial weight, reps, and sets.

When you get stronger though, you’ll have to increase the challenge, so your body keeps adapting, i.e. more strength, muscle, and so on.

To do this in practice you can do one of three things: more sets, more reps, or increasing the resistance (more weight, run faster, more Watts on the bike, etc.).

My advice is to increase the resistance. This will ensure that you keep making progress toward your goals.

Keep your workout plan fun

This one is just as important as every other aspect in this list.

Whatever you do, try to create a workout plan you enjoy. Don’t make it a burden, where you have to drag yourself through a workout you hate every time you enter the gym.

If your current workout doesn’t motivate you anymore, come back to this blog post and simply start over from scratch.

Keep your workouts fun and eventually, you’ll become the best you that you can be! It might be a cliché, but getting in shape is a marathon, not a sprint.

Better to do something you love.

Final words

Perhaps it’s your goal to become an absolute monster, generally fit, or anything in between.

No matter what it is, I hope I was able to teach you how you can create a workout plan for amazing results.

No matter what goal you're looking to achieve.

A plan is an awesome start to your journey, but of course, it’s following that same plan that will result in you achieving your goals.

I could give you a motivational quote, but instead whenever you feel like quitting, just tell yourself:

"Mama ain’t raises no little B*".

Now go smash your workouts.

What’s the reason you (want to) workout?